Did you know that Diet Coke can be used, along with Sprite, to make the soda visual-equivalent of a Black and Tan? It's fun for the whole family! First, pour (or preferably, use a soda tap) regular Sprite to about the halfway point in your glass. Then, carefully pour (or fill) the remainder of the glass with Diet Coke, along the inside edge thereof.

The end result will be a glass that has the clear Sprite at the bottom, with the Diet Coke floating atop.

The principle behind this is similar to the reason why diet sodas sometimes float in coolers and regular sodas sink: Nutrasweet is very potent, so the manufacturers only need to add a little bit to the syrup to get that sweet flavour, whereas regular sodas contain a lot of heavy sugars. Thus, having a higher portion of its contents being water-based, the diet cola will sometimes float in a bin of ice water, and the regular soda will sink.

The traditional method for formulating a diet beverage is to take the normal version, strip out the sugars, and replace them with calorie free sweeteners. After doing this, the flavor is tinkered with a little, and the product is released. This is of course the wrong approach and has created a large number of vile concoctions.

Diet Coke, on the other hand, was created from the ground up. The result, if its rapid rise to the third most popular soda is any indication, is a diet cola that actually tastes fairly good. Aside from the faintly unpleasant aftertaste of the aspartame, Diet Coke is a legitimately tasty cola in its own right.

Interestingly, when Coca-Cola was creating New Coke, they reversed the traditional diet cola formulation process. They took the hugely popular Diet Coke, stripped out the aspartame, and added high fructose corn syrup. Taste tests showed this to be a very promising product, the failure of which is now credited largely to marketing ineptitude and not a lousy flavor in and of itself.

Culled from snopes.com's article on whether or not New Coke was just a sophisticated marketing ploy.
(http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp)

Much to the satisfaction of diabetics everywhere - including me - diet drinks are coming out sweetened with sucralose - or Splenda - and not the bad-aftertasteneurotoxin aspartame. First came Pepsi One - which had originally been sweetened with aspartame. And now there is a new Diet Coke sweetened with Splenda on the market! The original flavor is still available as well as all the other Diet Coke products such as Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, Diet Coke with Lime, Diet Coke with Lemon, Diet Vanilla Coke, and Diet Cherry Coke.

The new Splenda-sweetened Diet Coke has a great flavor and to be honest I can't tell much of a difference between it and regular Coca-Cola. I have found that it tasted better than Pepsi One, as it seems to have more flavor. Some cans of Pepsi One that I have drank tasted really watered down for some reason (not all, but some). But every bottle and can of this new Diet Coke I have consumed so far have tasted really good and it is my new favorite sugarless soft drink. I think that anybody currently drinking the aspartame original Diet Coke would love this new one, unless they've gotten used to the traditional diet cola taste and would perhaps find this too sweet. (I have found that some longtime diet cola drinkers now find regular colas disgustingly sweet).

Below is Nutritional Information and ingredients for the original Diet Coke, followed by the same information on the new sucralosed Diet Coke for the purposes of comparison. (serving size for both is one can, or 12oz).